Terry Tempest Williams spoke at the UfO yesterday. She's one of the authors arrested March 9th, along with Maxine Hong Kingston and Alice Walker, during a protest march in Washington.
She was... painfully... careful.
Or at least that's the impression I got.
Knowing full well the adoring temperament of the crowd (it felt like a friggin church in the concert hall... that's one aspect of Eugene hippy-dom I find disturbing, that whole "your kids will meditate in school" and "oh, you just don't think like us" crap) and also knowing her speech was being recorded, she chose her words as an author. Loaded.
She said the word "shadow" about ten times.
What is a shadow?
She also said "George Bush is our president" twice.
She read Rachel Corrie's last letters addressed to her father, prior to her death in Palestine trying to protect a home from an Isreali bulldozer.
Williams also read a very disturbing letter from a Eugene girl who had lived in Colombia for a year. In the letter she mourns the death of young paramilitary (drug cartel) soldiers, those same soldiers that are often referred to as "death squads" because they raid the local villages, loot, rape, pillage and murder. Some guerilla fighters found a paramilitary encampment and reportedly executed them, and left their bodies in the ditch along the road.
The girl's letter bemoaned how the paramilitary is the only thing most 18 year old boys in Colombia can do, and the unfairness of the local media in reporting such a tragic loss of life on the last page of the paper in one small column. Also she regaled the local village's guerilla fighters for having taken the law into their own hands.
It was apparent from the letter that the woman loves Colombia. Perhaps she is merely expressing her sorrow for any loss of life, which on a cosmic, theoretical scale is honorable... but pardon me for believing there are some things worth fighting for, and against. And those young men in their death squad camped outside the village did have a choice... they could have gone and joined the resistance, joined the people fighting for their homes and freedom from fear and oppression.
That's why Rachel died in Palestine. That's why her death was on the front page of every newspaper.
She was... painfully... careful.
Or at least that's the impression I got.
Knowing full well the adoring temperament of the crowd (it felt like a friggin church in the concert hall... that's one aspect of Eugene hippy-dom I find disturbing, that whole "your kids will meditate in school" and "oh, you just don't think like us" crap) and also knowing her speech was being recorded, she chose her words as an author. Loaded.
She said the word "shadow" about ten times.
What is a shadow?
She also said "George Bush is our president" twice.
She read Rachel Corrie's last letters addressed to her father, prior to her death in Palestine trying to protect a home from an Isreali bulldozer.
Williams also read a very disturbing letter from a Eugene girl who had lived in Colombia for a year. In the letter she mourns the death of young paramilitary (drug cartel) soldiers, those same soldiers that are often referred to as "death squads" because they raid the local villages, loot, rape, pillage and murder. Some guerilla fighters found a paramilitary encampment and reportedly executed them, and left their bodies in the ditch along the road.
The girl's letter bemoaned how the paramilitary is the only thing most 18 year old boys in Colombia can do, and the unfairness of the local media in reporting such a tragic loss of life on the last page of the paper in one small column. Also she regaled the local village's guerilla fighters for having taken the law into their own hands.
It was apparent from the letter that the woman loves Colombia. Perhaps she is merely expressing her sorrow for any loss of life, which on a cosmic, theoretical scale is honorable... but pardon me for believing there are some things worth fighting for, and against. And those young men in their death squad camped outside the village did have a choice... they could have gone and joined the resistance, joined the people fighting for their homes and freedom from fear and oppression.
That's why Rachel died in Palestine. That's why her death was on the front page of every newspaper.
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